A river full of forestry slash near Tolaga Bay after Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook
With Tai Rāwhiti's forestry sector on the decline, local experts are urging the government to step up and put more effort into resourcing the region's transition into more sustainable land use and other economic opportunities.
Forestry has ground to a halt in some areas - part of the fallout after the district was hit by devastating cyclones Hale and Gabrielle last year.
The region is brimming with ideas to transition Tai Rāwhiti's whenua and whānau away from pine plantations. Te Weu Charitable Trust is a collective of local researchers and activists focused on the future risks and opportunities for the region.
Researcher Manu Caddie is involved with the trust, and told RNZ the government was dragging its heels on thinking outside the pine-forestry box that it had relied on for so many decades.
"It's super urgent. We need to at least be committing to a plan now if not implementing the whole thing straight away," he said.
Hikuwai Bridge in Tai Rāwhiti was destroyed by woody debris during Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook
He worries about extreme weather events becoming more intense and frequent, increasing the risk of the region's reliance on pine trees.
"The longer we leave it, the worse state we're going to be leaving the place for our children and mokopuna," Caddie said.
"It's very very urgent we get on with this, ideally that transition would be well underway already as the longer we leave it the harder it's going to become. The soils get thinner with every rain and every slip."
Forestry in parts of Tairawhiti ground to a halt
'Tragedy' if Tai Rāwhiti doesn't transition
Caddie said the government must step up and do more to support the transition away from pine and into more sustainable land use, because it had been responsible for much of the land being cleared for pasture farming and extensive pine tree plantations.
"It feels like there is some obligation on central government to support that transition which they've been reluctant to acknowledge even needs to happen, let alone get behind," he said.
But Forestry Minister Todd McClay told RNZ that was not a view that he or many experts from the forestry sector shared.
"Forestry is an important part of New Zealand's economy, and provides many jobs on the East Coast which need to be protected," McClay said.
"The government is working closely with the GDC and respected members of the forestry industry to manage and reduce risk through better and more practical rules."
He said the government was reviewing slash management practices, and would amend the National Environmental Standards for Commercial Forestry so that councils could use stronger local rules where required and when based upon clear evidence.
"We want them to focus on high-risk areas, which is what GDC is currently doing, rather than suggesting that there should no longer be forestry in the Tai Rāwhiti region," he said.
However, Caddie said that was not good enough.
"The tragedy would be if we don't accept that's the situation and think somehow magically things are going to sort themselves out when all of the evidence is clearly pointing the opposite direction.
"Unfortunately there is a lot of vested interests and a lot of money tied up in assets that don't want to acknowledge that."
'Natives with deeper, stronger roots are suited to the land'
In the region 600,000 hectares is being used for pasture and pine, and erosion-prone soils and slopes constitute nearly 90 percent of land in Tai Rāwhiti. Caddie said it's led to the loss of precious soils and the collapsing of mature pine plantations.
Pine trees were flattened in Cyclone Gabrielle. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook
"What's going to need to replace it, is permanent natives. Natives with deeper stronger roots are suited to the land because that's what was here before we cut them all down," he said.
With a push to plant more natives to save the soils and slopes, the challenge is how to make money from it.
Caddie said ideas included selective harvesting of native timber, honey production, eco tourism such as an East Coast trail like the pilgrim paths in Europe, and making therapeutics out of plants.
One of Caddie's projects was already doing that, and showing huge potential.
"So we've got a product that we've developed for treating eczema, that's from oil of the kānuka leaf and we're in negotiations with a couple companies in US and Europe for global licensing of that product," he said.
Another solution was carbon and biodiversity credits. Renee Raroa is also part of the Te Weu Charitable Trust and is working with Toha NZ, developing an online platform to reliably measure and prove regenerative outcomes.
For example, when the buyers of mānuka honey from the East Coast paid for some new plantings.
"We capture the proof that the planting happened, and using our data templates we start to capture the proof that those trees are staying in the ground, the weeds are under control, that the pests haven't eaten them - essentially proof of action," she said.
Then that verified data asset was 'packaged up' so it can be attached to the product, and be purchased and re-used.
"Really simply, another type of buyer is a carbon offsetter - who might be a compelled emitter, compelled to purchase carbon offsets but wants to show that they're not putting all their money into pine for example," Raroa said.
She said with new digital public infrastructure, they can measure the true value of environmental action and unleash impact investment to the frontline - at scale.
'There were no aspirational careers'
The region also has plenty of economic ideas that do not involve any trees or plants, such as Rāngai, a film studio offering free secondary and tertiary education, and jobs in the screen arts industry.
It is the brainchild of local man Shannon Dowsing, who came home from working overseas to find the main jobs in Tai Rāwhiti were still truck driving and wood chopping.
"I could see that there was a deficit in options in Tai Rāwhiti - there were no aspirational careers," he said.
"We really did target screen arts not only to leverage creativity and natural talent in region, but also to identify with our culture and leverage that as a strength of the region."
Because, he said, forestry's time was up.
"The industry can't serve us long term, it's lost its social licence to operate and the land is just not suitable for continued plantation forestry."
He wanted to lift the region's educational achievements.
"Those are the outcomes we need to elevate a large proportion of our society out of labour based roles into well paid roles, to start seeing parity across the workforce."